New Product Development Strategy: A Case Study in a Textile/Apparel Company

Apparel manufacturing firms have provided much attention in recent years on improved market responsiveness by introducing new product in a demand activated, customer driven and retail competitive business environment. New product development, either incremental or radical, is now becoming the key success factors of textile/apparel industries to sustain in the fierce competition. This paper is aimed to study the strategy of new product development of a textile/apparel company in a developing country and thus conducted a case study in a Textile/Apparel Company in Bangladesh. The company, is basically a manufacturer of infants’ clothing and export oriented. At the same time, this company is devoted to introduce and market new product (baby dresses) in domestic market. The company started this manufacturing line recently and set up some strategies that are compatible for local market. By changing design in material, process, assembly, and fashion, the company has introduced infants’ apparel successfully in the local market. The strategic model of the company for new product development has some specific characteristics that are established from their basic mission. These are: Cost is reduced by removing prototype production phase from new product development strategy and minimizing market survey. Rather, the company mostly dependent on the opinion of the employees. Employee empowerment and involvement is very strong. At the beginning, the company does not introduce the product as completely a new product; rather they focus the product as a change and additional dimension to the existing product line. If the market accepts it as an innovation, then the marketing division declares it as a new product. The company largely depends on extensive interactions between top management and different cross-functional divisions.